Half-Life: Alyx has lastly arrived, marking Valve’s huge return to their most well-known game collection in addition to their first foray into the realms of VR. You can learn extra about wot Graham thinks of the game itself in his Half-Life: Alyx review, however right here I believed I’d concentrate on Half-Life: Alyx’s VR efficiency chops, and particularly what sort of expertise you possibly can count on by sticking to the game’s minimal PC necessities. Can a GTX 1060 actually ship the Half-Life VR expertise we’ve been ready for? Let’s discover out beneath.
Of course, testing a VR game’s efficiency generally is a bit tough. There’s no body price counter seen from inside a VR headset, for instance, and far of your expertise will rely on precisely which sort of VR headset you may have, as their respective shows all have totally different refresh charges. The Valve Index, for instance, can at the moment go all the way in which as much as 144Hz, whereas the Oculus Rift S is restricted to 80Hz. The HTC Vive Cosmos headsets, alternatively, can do as much as 90Hz.
I’ll be doing a extra thorough VR headset comparability later within the week, evaluating how Half-Life: Alyx performs on the Valve Index, HTC Vive Cosmos, HTC Vive Cosmos Elite, Oculus Rift S and the Oculus Quest through Oculus Link, however proper now I’m extra involved with how its uncooked efficiency compares throughout totally different graphics playing cards. Is a GTX 1060 highly effective sufficient to ship a easy, vomit-free VR expertise, for instance? Or would you be higher off upgrading your PC a bit additional to essentially maximise your headset’s refresh price? Here’s what I’ve found.
Half-Life: Alyx PC necessities
Before we get began, listed below are the minimal PC necessities you could play Half-Life: Alyx on PC. As chances are you’ll bear in mind from my earlier Half-Life: Alyx PC requirements and VR headset specs information, that is really a bit greater than a variety of as we speak’s minimal VR headset necessities, as most headsets solely require an Nvidia GTX 970 / AMD Radeon R9 290 graphics card, 8GB of RAM and an Intel Core i5-4590 / an previous AMD FX CPU.
Half-Life: Alyx minimal PC necessities:
OS: Windows 10
CPU: Intel Core i5-7500 / AMD Ryzen 5 1600
RAM: 12GB RAM
GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 (6GB) / AMD Radeon RX 580 (8GB)
Half-Life: Alyx, alternatively, wants a system that’s barely extra upmarket. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be too bang updated, as its minimal Nvidia GPU remains to be simply the 6GB GTX 1060, which, in accordance with Steam’s {hardware} charts has been the most well-liked graphics card for fairly a while now, and its CPU necessities aren’t loopy fashionable both. As a consequence, anybody who has purchased or built a PC within the final couple of years then you need to be fairly set. The solely factor which may throw a spanner within the works is its excessive RAM requirement.
Half-Life: Alyx VR efficiency
To take a look at Half-Life: Alyx, I used my trusty Intel Core i5-8600Ok CPU operating at inventory speeds, 16GB of RAM and my Asus GeForce GTX 1060 OC 9Gbps Edition (the identical GTX 1060 I take advantage of for all my game efficiency assessments) with all the most recent Windows 10 updates, game updates and graphics card drivers put in. I additionally used the HTC Vive Cosmos for the needs of this take a look at, attributable to its greater refresh price of 90Hz versus the Oculus Rift S’ 80Hz show.
Now, looking for out what body price your VR headset is definitely operating at is a little bit of a problem. Your typical Steam overlay doesn’t work in VR, nor does Nvidia Shadowplay. Instead, I used SteamVR’s Display Performance Graph, which you’ll be able to both allow to point out in your desktop, or contained in the headset itself should you go into SteamVR’s Developer menu. It doesn’t provide you with a operating body price counter, sadly, nevertheless it does let you know its body time, which is the pace it’s rendering the game at.
For the HTC Vive Cosmos, a 90Hz refresh price equates to a body time of round 11ms. If the headset’s body time goes above this quantity, then it will likely be operating slower than its 90Hz refresh price. If it’s sooner than 11ms (which exhibits up as numerous inexperienced squiggles beneath the central 11ms line), then you definately’ll be hitting that 90Hz refresh price effective and dandy. However, the upper you flip up the graphics settings, the more durable your PC’s going to must work to hit that excellent body time counter.
Now, Half-Life: Alyx has 4 graphics choices: Low, Medium, High and Ultra. Here’s what all of them appear like in observe – or not less than as near ‘in practice’ as we are able to utilizing SteamVR’s VR View choice.
- Low
- Medium
- High
- Ultra
As you possibly can most likely see, there’s not a large quantity of distinction between its 4 graphics choices, and I didn’t actually discover a lot of an uplift in visible constancy in-game, both. That’s as a result of all 4 high quality settings have their Texture settings ramped as much as High (even Ultra), making certain a way of visible parity no matter what graphics card you’ve acquired in your PC. There is an additional Ultra texture setting you possibly can allow by opening up the superior efficiency settings menu, all advised, however Ultra’s default choice is ready to High like every thing else.
Instead, it’s issues like shadows, character element, fog, particle results, audio element and ragdoll rely that differ between every high quality setting. You know, atmospheric stuff. Low, for example, has its Flickering Light, Soft Cloth and High Quality Hologram settings switched off (the remaining have all of them switched on), so Half-Life: Alyx most likely received’t really feel fairly as spooky consequently – which can, actually, be a boon should you don’t do effectively with horror.
Naturally, all these items take their toll on the headset’s body time counter, and as I progressively moved by way of all of them on my GTX 1060, the world began to turn into noticeably extra juddery. Low and Medium have been nearly inside the 11ms ball park, however High acquired noticeably choppier after I began wanting round whereas shifting. It wasn’t so dangerous that it made me really feel nauseous, however I additionally wouldn’t suggest enjoying at this setting for lengthy durations of time, both.
As a consequence, GTX 1060 homeowners will most likely be effective should you stick to both Low or Medium once you’re enjoying on a Vive or Oculus Rift, however should you’re searching for most ambiance, or are certainly enjoying on a Valve Index and wish to profit from its 120Hz and 144Hz refresh price choices, then you definately’re nearly actually going to wish a extra highly effective graphics card.
Next, I attempted my EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti SC Gaming card, as I wished to see how one thing extra highly effective in Nvidia’s older GTX 10-series household dealt with the game earlier than I went full RTX. Here, Half-Life: Alyx defaulted to High high quality settings after I booted up the game, and for essentially the most half appeared it appeared comparatively comfy there. It was nonetheless a bit borderline, admittedly, usually creeping up towards 14ms at its worst moments, nevertheless it undoubtedly wasn’t as juddery as my GTX 1060 card. Ultra, nonetheless, might be a bit a lot right here, as though it hovered round an analogous body time of between 13-14ms for many of my testing, digicam actions turned noticeably jerky even in comparatively empty scenes.
As a consequence, these searching for the smoothest doable High / Ultra expertise in Half-Life: Alyx ought to most likely equip themselves with both an RTX 2070 or RTX 2070 Super (in spite of everything, the GTX 1070 Ti is roughly on par with Nvidia’s newer RTX 2060, so it stands to purpose to go one other step up the RTX ladder to get a extra noticeable soar in efficiency).
When I booted up Half-Life: Alyx for the third time with my Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Super Founders Edition card, for instance, it defaulted to High once more, however had a a lot decrease body time of simply 8ms. Indeed, you might most likely bump all of it the way in which as much as Ultra should you wished, as this solely made my body time counter rise to round 9ms. As a consequence, that is most likely the kind of graphics card you’re going to wish to play Half-Life: Alyx on its finest graphics settings, and undoubtedly the sort of calibre card you’ll must profit from the Index’s greater refresh charges.
As I mentioned above, I’ll be doing a extra thorough headset comparability of Half-Life: Alyx within the coming days, so be sure to be careful for that as effectively. In the imply time, although, why not watch RPS Vid Bud Matthew play by way of the primary couple of hours of the game (with extra commentary by yours actually)? Below, we’ve acquired the game operating on an RTX 2080 Super and an Intel Core i7-8700Ok CPU, and we’re enjoying with the Valve Index. It’s a proper hoot, I swear!
